


The Suit of Swords

by Sera_dy_Relandrant



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-03-17 12:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3528878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_dy_Relandrant/pseuds/Sera_dy_Relandrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Theon Greyjoy calls himself the heir to Pyke, a boy from the greenlands. Katniss Everdeen is a thrall's daughter, surly and serving under his sister's command. What do they have in common? Black hair, grey eyes - and a way with a bow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Thrall's Child

_The children of slaves are born into bondage, but the children of thralls are born free; any babe born on one of the islands is considered ironborn, even when both his parents are thralls._

**\- The World of Ice and Fire  
**

* * *

**Harlaw Island, 290 AC**

The child's hand is warm in hers, the woman's cool as nacre. Two little hands, her mother's and her sister's, and now both are in her keeping.

"When kings sat the Seastone Chair, we yielded to you the gifts of youth and beauty on their pyres. When great warriors and high lords descend to your watery halls, we cast the bounty of gold and silver and iron unto the waves, for such is your due."

Here the priest stops to catch his breath. Mud-speckled foam laps against the edges of the coffin, the water swirling cold and brown around her naked ankles.

 _This is all wrong_ , Katniss thinks. _He wouldn't have wanted this._ She thinks of the secret lake in the woods. Her father's woods, she always liked to think of them as, though they would always be poachers inside it and all the game was for the fat lord in his stone castle. She had been plaiting willow leaves into a necklace for Prim, he had been whittling a doll from a wooden peg for her. And when the sun had shone hot and high in the sky, she had laid her drowsy head in his lap and he had sung her to sleep.

"But this, O Lord," the Drowned God's priest continues, swishing his driftwood cudgel, "was a lowly thrall, a humble bondsman. Have mercy on his soul and his meager offerings of fruit and flesh."

Katniss grits her teeth. The fruit and flesh is the last they're like to see of nourishing food in a while - parting gifts from Haymitch Abernathy, whose thrall her father was. As the children of thralls they are not in bondage themselves. Freedwomen, born on the Isles, they are no responsibility of Abernathy's and being children, not worth keeping at his hearth as salt wives or serving-women. From the morrow, they can look forward to feeding themselves.

Salt is sprinkled on the waves and Prim's eyes widen with longing as heels of bread and raw fish follow in short order. The men, friends of her father's, set their shoulders to the coffin. Dry-eyed Katniss watches as it sinks under the brine at last. Without stopping to hear the condolences that are sure to follow, she races up the knoll behind Haymitch Abernathy. He has spent a few minutes at his man's coffin, provided the funerary feast, and duty done has left to get roaringly drunk.

"My lord," she cries, catching up with him, "I beg of you a boon." He is no lord, only a landholder beholden to Lord Rodrik Harlaw, but she'll stroke his vanity all the same. _And anything else of his that wants stroking._

He does not stop for her, does not even turn to acknowledge her. A grunt is all she gets from him. And why should a scrawny brown waif expect more from the likes of one who was the most cunning butcher of men in the Isles, in his youth?

"I have a little sister, a mother," she begins, hating how breathy and childish her voice sounds. "Please, my lord-"

"I've let you keep the hut and your things inside it," he says shortly. "Few would be as kind, girl." There is a warning in his voice, this is a man known for his drunken rages, not the sweetness of his temper.

"I could be of service to you," she squeaks. "I-I am almost a woman grown and-and-"

He spares her a glance, dismissal writ large. "I have men looking for salt wives but they want pillowy tits and thighs to rest their heads on night. Not twigs. Come back to me in a few years when you've more meat on your bones."

If she were still a little girl, a foolish, feckless little girl, she would cry. Instead she says, "In a few years I'll starve to death."

He almost shrugs at that. That is the way of life in the Isles - babes die at the breast, thralls suffocate or are buried in cave-ins in the salt and iron mines, women bleed to death in the birthing bed or at their husbands' fists. Little girls die of hunger. "You can always try Cray."

Yes, she thinks, letting him go. She can always try Cray, the castle sergeant and a notorious sampler of female flesh.

Morning finds Katniss scrubbing her face and feet in a bucket of clean water for the first time in weeks, while Prim watches from the bed. She has her lower lip between her teeth, sucking at it as she does when she is scared or worrying. But even at seven she is wise beyond her years - she does not ask.

Their mother sits at the table, hands folded in her lap. Her eyes are as blue and blank as hyssop blossoms and she too does not speak.

"Papa was a northman," Prim says. "We shouldn't have put him to sea. We should have buried him under a heart-tree, like he would have wanted."

This is blasphemy, even from a small child and Katniss glances sharply at her mother to see what she makes of it. But her mother, so quick to give tongue to the slightest breath of treachery when their father was alive, is silent today. So it falls to Katniss to play both mother and father.

"Primrose, you can't say those things," she says sharply. "Not even here. Not even to us. You could be whipped at the pillory for it."

"I know," Prim says with a nod of resignation. "But I just had to say it." She watches curiously as Katniss smooths out her freshly-washed hair with the cow's horn comb. "Where are you going?"

"Somewhere."

"Will you bring food?" They have not eaten since the funeral feast and scantily at that too. They have scarcely eaten at all since their father's death.

"I hope so," Katniss says. She throws her shawl over her hair and shoulders, but she leaves the lacings at the neck of her gown open. Cray will want to see what he's buying.

Her mother stirs and gives a little jerk and Katniss waits to hear her speak. She has her arguments marshaled up, all in a row to be thrown at the target of her mother's aghast face like finger-knives. _We are dying. We have nothing to sell but ourselves - if not you, then it has to be me. This is for Prim._ But her mother only sags back in her chair without saying a word - had she expected otherwise? - and Katniss sighs and stoops to kiss her sister. "Be good, Prim," she whispers, "Take care of Mother for me when I'm gone."

Prim nods and there are tears in her eyes, as though she has the faintest glimmering of what Katniss is about. She may only be six but she is not stupid.

Cray lives in a fine timber house with a tiled roof nestled in a sunny corner of the keep. He comes quickly when she knocks, a smear of honey on the side of his mouth from his breakfast. The sight of it makes Katniss' stomach grumble and she falters through her carefully rehearsed speech. But at the end of it, there is only pity in his eyes - not desire as she had hoped to evoke. Not desire at all.

"I haven't flowered yet," she says desperately, "if you want a child-" Its a sin to bed a child but where there are sins, there are always lusty men willing to take advantage of them.

"I wouldn't mind a pretty little maid," he admits, "say one like your little sister. Rose isn't it?"

"Primrose," she says between gritted teeth. "Prim."

He nods. "That's the one. She has your mother's looks."

"She's not even seven."

"Aye, as I said - a pretty little maid." He grimaces at the thunderous look on her face. "Well think on't. Send her to me when you like and I'll pay dear enough."

"There won't be a when," she says and thinks of adding a few choice cuss words. It'd be a fist to her face and blood in her mouth if she said them aloud, so she only nods to him civilly.

"I'll be waiting," he shouts behind her back and she thinks he can wait forever for her to whore her baby sister out to him.

Prim's eyes light up when she comes back. "I'm sorry I didn't bring back any food, little duck," Katniss says, twining a lock of her sister's hair around her finger. Pale gold like fresh-churned butter, not a color that's easy to find in the Isles. But then their mother was not born to the Isles - she was taken by reavers from the westerlands where beautiful women and golden hair are legion. _Oh the hearts you'll break, Prim._

"It doesn't matter," Prim says, throwing her arms impulsively around her sister. "I'll make nettle tea for all of us." Hardly something to fill the belly, but it might stave the pangs off for a little while.

"There's always fish in the sea," Katniss says, trying to be cheerful. But it is hard and she gives up the pose, it fools no one. "Fat good it'll do us though without a net or a boat." Her father was a miner, not a fisherman.

"And game in the forest," Prim murmurs.

Katniss snorts. "That's the lord's virgin woods. Its not ours for the taking, not like the open sea."

"It never stopped Papa," Prim reminds her. "And we might not have a net but we do have a bow. And we have someone who knows how to use it." She gives Katniss a meaningful look over the cracked rim of her cup and the muddy tea sloshing inside it.

* * *

Every morning she slings the great bow over her back, scatters a handful of salt over the threshold to ward off the wicked ones and gritting her teeth, says, "I am not afraid."

But she is.

"I can come too," Prim offers, her voice a brave little quaver even though she is owl-eyed with fear. "I could pick berries and herbs while you hunt. I have the book, I know which ones are good and which are not."

"You take care of Mother and the house," Katniss tells her. "You're too small now, you'll only slow me down." Prim nods, grateful at the reprieve but trying not to show it too hard.

So far she's had some luck - plucking eggs from birds' nests and snares she sets for small creatures. But she's never used her father's bow and at the slightest sound, she's all too quick to scramble up a tree and into safety. All very well for high summer, but what will they do when winter finally comes?

 _By the grace of the gods, I'll be old enough to be bedded by then,_ she thinks disconsolately. The idea of providing for her family in the depths of winter is overwhelming - no woman can do it alone, she has always been taught, not without a man, a protector.

 _Not a brave huntress at all,_ she thinks, disgusted with herself. Her papa had called her that - he had made her feel brave, magnificent. Now she feels like a drab little squirrel, a petty poacher, a thief.

That is the day she meets Gale.

She falls out of her bough, so startled is she to see another human in the woods. Luckily its a low one. He gives her the same look he might a mangled possum caught in a trap, mildly repelled and not quite sure it'll make good eating once its stripped and skinned. Not enough meat on the bones, a mangy little creature almost not worth the effort of slitting its throat in a clean blow.

They know each other in the vague way all the serfs' children within the castle walls do - their fathers worked and died together, once upon a time their mothers would pass gossip at the well with the other women. But he is almost a man grown now and being freeborn, not bound to the mines. Still too young, too slight to be of great use on a galley or the castle walls but growing fast and easily providing for a family of five.

"These are the lord's woods, little poacher-girl," he tells her mildly. "What are you doing here?"

She hugs her bow tighter to herself. "Same as you are, Gale Hawthorne," she snaps, nervousness make her voice higher and sharper.

He circles around her and she jumps around so that she never has her back to him. "Happens I might spare you," he says. "Wouldn't want to have such a pretty thing like you lose a hand or a foot."

"Happens I might _not_ spare you," she says sullenly. "They'd chop off your arm at the elbow and your foot at the knee if I turned you in, you being a boy and older." But she knows who's side the keeper of the woods would take if it came to a quarrel - between a strapping young man with surplus coin in his pouch and an ugly little waif, there'd be no contest at all.

He laughs as if he can read her mind. "That's a fine bow," he says, nodding to it, strapped across her back. "I knew your father and he was a fair craftsman. Since you've no use for it, I think you'd like to give it to me."

"I would _not_ ," she says hotly. _And my father wasn't just a fair craftsman, he was the best apprentice on Bear Island!_ Or so he had always told her, before the reavers had burnt his homestead and taken him away when he was little older than her. A rustling in the bushes distracts her for a moment but Gale doesn't seem to have heard.

"Little girl like you with a big bow like that? You're just giving men a reason to shove an arrow up somewhere." He chuckles. "Be reasonable now, Kitten."

What happens next is rage and pure instinct. "My name," she hisses, stepping back and notching an arrow, "is _Katniss_." And she lets it fly past his shoulder, the goose feather almost brushing his cheek. He leaps back, startled, stumbles and goes sprawling at her feet. And a hundred years away, she hits a squirrel in the eye. _I know a man who'd pay dearly for unmarked squirrel,_ she thinks dreamily.

She licks her lips and though her heart is beating faster than she ever knew it could, she forces her voice to be calm and smiles down benignly at Gale. "You were saying?"


	2. Black Wind

_There were women on the Iron Islands - not many, but a few - who crewed the longships along with their men, and it was said that salt and sea changed them, gave them a man's appetites.  
_

**\- A Clash of Kings**

* * *

**Ten Towers, 294 AC**

Katniss is four-and-ten the year _Black Wind_ lands at Ten Towers. Slim-prowed and high-masted the longship is a beauty and a virgin - everything its captain is rumored not to be.

Gale and she stand hip-to-hip on the Long Stone Quay, along with other curious onlookers come from the castle and the village. Gale sucks his fingers and blows the _Black Wind_ a wistful kiss, all the while spinning her stories of the Lady Asha, some that make her laugh and some that leave her wincing. For it is the Kraken's Daughter who holds command, this her maiden voyage as captain. Gale's stories are embellished with a boy's lascivious imagination, decidedly lewd and therefore of the best sort.

"They say she wriggled out of her gown and stood mother-naked in the hall at Pyke." He licks his lips. "Just imagine it, Kitten - that wiry black thatch down there and those hard little brown nipples... oh, the story you were saying? Lord Balon wept like a woman, said that he had no sons left. Then she took her dirk to her tits and said, yes, you have one left, and sawed them clean off. Fine, firm teats they were too, the juiciest you'd ever see but she never hesitated, not for a whit."

"What, did you taste and see them for yourself?" Katniss teases, with a gurgle of laughter. "Did you suck the juice clean off them before they came off?"

"He hasn't yet," a woman interrupts them. "But he's always welcome to." She's slim as the spear of a shaft, a little older than Gale and clad in homespun, as simply as Katniss herself. Her black hair is hacked short to her earlobes, her face neither homely nor beautiful. Her eyes hold yours though, grey and glimmering and restless like the winter sea with the sun on it. You would take her for a serving-woman... but only if you had a block of wood for brains.

"M'lady," Katniss says, ducking into an awkward curtsy. Gale almost falls flat on his face in his haste to make his bow and Asha Greyjoy laughs but not unkindly.

"Brawny boy like you," she says amiably, "I've a pair of tits that you're welcome to taste. I never took a dirk to them, though there's a place I keep for dirks and swords on my person. You're welcome to find them."

"I meant no disrespect-" Gale says haltingly but the woman is not listening.

"How old are you?"

"He's six-and-ten," Katniss says for the both of them, thrusting herself between her friend and Lady Asha. "And I'm fourteen."

"Are you his sister then?" Lady Asha asks, studying them. They share the same shade of olive skin, the sullen grey eyes and hanks of thick, black hair common to many thralls. It is a reasonable estimation.

"Of a sort," she says, because Gale is almost family. They share their kills at table, they share their sorrows and joys in the woods, they share everything but a roof and a bed and Katniss knows that his mother already dreams of the day when she will come to their home and never leave and fill it with fat, laughing children. _That's not for me,_ she thinks with a shudder but she's always been too polite to say that upfront to Hazel. _She'll reckon that in time I'm not right for any man. Gale deserves better._

"Thralls?"

Gale stands up a little straighter and sticks his chest out with manly pride. "Freedmen, born and bred."

"Hmm." Lady Asha taps his chest and smiles up at him. "Come to the docks tomorrow morning. I'm looking for good strong men to row my _Black Wind._ I'm trading south and west, mind, not reaving." Trading's nowhere near as prosperous as reaving, but these are untroubled times and King Robert's peace holds all along the coast, from the Bay of Seals to the Sea of Dorne. And rowing this Greyjoy's flagship is a few sights better than farming or mining or service in the castle.

"And women?" Katniss asks eagerly.

" _Women_ , aye," Lady Asha says, looking her up and down skeptically. "Not children."

"I'm not a child." She hasn't been a child for years, not since she marched out of her house with her father's bow slung across her back. There's not a soul has a keener eye than her on all Harlaw Isle, she'd put money on that.

"Prove it then on the morrow," Lady Asha tells her. "There'll always be space aboard my ship for them that prove themselves worthy. Man, woman, dancing monkey."

She can picture it, all the way back home. South and west, places she's never dreamed of, coin to buy soft, white bread and thatch the tumbling roof and some left to spare, freedom. But it all fades at the threshold. Her mother sits silently on her chair as she has sat for years. And Prim... her open, trusting smile is like to break Katniss' heart. How can she even think of leaving them? How can she be so selfish?

Prim coaxes the story out of her, she always does. "You should go," she insists. "Its your best chance, Katniss, you'd be stupid not to take it."

"And leave you all alone, little duck?"

"But I won't-"

"Mother won't be any help and you know it," Katniss tells her fiercely. She can just imagine leaving her baby sister to her mother's protection. _They'll suck the marrow from her bones and then slit her throat._

"But I don't mean Mother." Prim is almost ten and she has a plan, she has thought things through. _She's not my baby anymore,_ Katniss realizes with awe, _she's growing into her own person._ "Lady Asha left her mother at Ten Towers. Lady Alannys, she was a Harlaw. She's not in her right mind, everyone knows that. I've heard Lady Gwynesse is looking for handmaids for her and I thought-I thought I might try." She smiles uncertainly, seeking reassurance, and Katniss strokes her cheek.

"I can't think of anyone who'd be better for the part," Katniss tells her. "Look how you've dealt with Mother all these years and you not even ten yet. You're a good girl and steady, anyone in the keep can vouch for you." _And pretty,_ she thinks pragmatically. A place as Lady Alannys' handmaid is better than she has dreamed of for her sister. _You'll wear gowns of thrice-dyed wool and silk girdles and you'll keep your hands white and soft as they should be. Pearls in your lobes, perhaps, if the mad old bat takes a liking to you. And who wouldn't like you, Prim?_

"I'll look after Mother too," Prim promises her. "I can try to find her a place in the castle stillroom if I beg hard enough, if they take a liking to me. She knows so much about herbs and medicines-"

" _Knew_ ," Katniss snorts. She eyes her mother with disfavor. The shell that's left. "You can leave her here to starve for all I care. Or better yet, sell her to the stews. She's still pretty enough, there must be someone drunk enough who'd want to swive her for all that she's a cold fish."

Prim covers her mouth in little girl horror. Words plop like bubbles, unspoken, in her mouth.

"Its a hard world, Primrose," Katniss tells her, rising from the table to see to their supper. "Best you learn it now from your sister who loves you. Others won't be as gentle as me."

* * *

**Lannisport**

"You're more monkey than maid," Lady Asha tells her, watching her scramble down the rigging. "How'd you learn to climb so quick and steady?"

"There were trees round where I grew up. A whole forest of them."

"Poaching then," Lady Asha says. Katniss smiles but keeps her lips shut. It pleases Lady Asha to play the jolly sailor's part, a great show of bonhomie, shoulder-slapping, ale-swigging and finger-dancing but at heart she's still a kraken. _What I don't say aloud won't kill me,_ Katniss reasons.

"You mistrust me," her ladyship says. "No, forgive me, you mistrust everyone. Except that Gale of yours."

"That Gale of yours now, m'lady," Katniss reminds her. Asha's taken Gale to her bed. A wildcat marks her prey, her mate with her piss - Asha's marked him by licking peach juice off his beardless face in front of her crew.

"Why he's free as air," Asha laughs. "If you want him in your bed, I'd recommend that you keep your clam looser than you do your tongue. And smile once in a while, girl." She speaks lightly but it isn't worth the trouble of taking up her offer, Katniss decides. _And I don't want him like she does. Not as a woman wants a man._

"I thank you for your concern, m'lady, but I'm good as I am," Katniss says steadily. "Free as air."

At Lannisport, even the air smells sweeter, fruitier, _richer_. "My mother was from the west," she tells Lady Asha. "A Harlaw took her for a salt wife because she was so beautiful."

"But your father was a thrall," Lady Asha points out.

"The Harlaw tired of her because she would not speak," Katniss says. "Even when he took his fists to her, she kept mum as an oyster... so he gave her to Haymitch Abernathy. Old Abernathy had little use for women so he gave her to one of his lowest thralls when he was drunk, one who worked in the coal mines." _But not before he sent half-a-hundred men to fuck the silence out of her._ She doesn't need Lady Asha's pity, so she doesn't mention that part of the story. 

"Did he ever teach her to speak again?"

"No," Katniss lies. _He charmed the gift of speech back into her,_ she thinks. _And when he died, he took his gift from her with him._ "I've never heard her speak in all my life." She had been so different when _he_ was alive... warm and bright and loving. But she puts those thoughts away from her. She has a sister still. That should be enough.

Qarl the Maid and Gale come to blows in a wine-sink over Lady Asha's honor. Katniss swigs brown ale and watches them at it, a pair of rutting young stags showing off holds little interest but it makes for good sport. Lady Asha's lips twitch behind her hands, she kisses the winner and when she emerges at last, breathless, his blood is smeared all over her lips. Gale's blood.

 _He'll forget about his cuts and scrapes in the morning,_ Katniss assures herself, watching the older woman haul her friend out. _She'll fuck him into oblivion._ A tiny voice whispers that its like to be a chill night and that if she wants a warm bed she might as well try her hand at Qarl. He'll be lonely tonight, lonely and hurting. He has a pretty face, clean as a spit, and she's young and firm-breasted. But before the idle thought can emerge more fully into something she might see herself doing, a young man thumps himself down beside her.

He has the face you might find in a painting and the build of an ox. _Some long-lost cousin of mine,_ she thinks in amusement for he has the same fair hair and hyssop-blue eyes of Prim and their mother.

"I'm Peeta," he says, beaming at her, as open and sweet and trusting as a powdered babe. "Peeta Mellark. I thought you might be thirsty." He holds up a flagon that they might share.

She says nothing but she lets him pour out the measure and after he takes a hearty draught from his cup, she puts her own to her lips. "Summerwine," he says, pleased at the slow, cautious smile that spreads over her face.

"Are you a wine merchant?" she asks.

"Grain," he tells her. "Or at least my father is. And my brothers sell bread all over Lannisport and even to the Rock." _Glorified bakers then._ She waits for him to spill his guts, he's the sort that's like to with or without provocation. Really, he reminds her of a slice of ham, so pink and plump and juicy. "Not me, though. I'm going to be a knight." He's aspiring to be something better than he is, but then aren't they all?

She quaffs his sugary wine, she shares bread and meat with him and when she's full, she leaves him. In all that time, she's not shared more than a thimbleful of words with him. "Won't you give me your name at least?" he asks, with wounded blue eyes. They remind her so much of Prim's - and she misses her little sister, gods how she misses her - that she relents. A name can do no more harm, surely?

"Katniss Everdeen," she says.

"Katniss." He smiles guilelessly at her and kisses her hand. She pulls back like a scorched cat but the gesture is innocent, chivalrous really. _That's how a lord from the greenlands kisses his lady fair, you fool._ But she's only a scrawny ship-rat, for all her fierceness, and he's an upjumped baker's boy, for all his fine words. "I hope we might again someday."

She nods at him civilly and leaves the loud, hot ale-house for the soothing darkness of the ship. Tomorrow they're to set course for the Arbor, to trade salt and pelts and iron for wine and grain and cloth. _Not likely we'll ever meet again. Not likely at all._

* * *

**Ten Towers, 295 AC**

It has been a long year, some parts good, some bad, but it is worth it to see the look on her sister's face when she comes home.

"Katniss!" Prim screams, throwing herself around Katniss like she did when she was a toddler. And then, louder, " _A goat_?"

"I thought you might like a friend," Katniss smiles, leading the dainty little thing inside. Grown maudlin for a moment, she's even bought a pink silk ribbon to tie around the creature's neck. "Figure we deserved the fresh milk. And you can churn cheese and butter, of course, really she'll start to pay for herself in a bit."

"She's a darling," Prim coos, on her knees and hugging the goat. "I shall call her Lady."

"Lady?" Katniss laughs and ruffles her sister's fine, fair hair. "Call her what you like, little duck. She's yours, all yours." She has other presents of course and coin enough to spare till she next finds work, but she thought Prim would like to see this one first. _She's always been so gentle with animals._ "I see you haven't put that one down yet, though she's long past due."

"You shouldn't speak of Mother so," Prim says, in a wounded voice. "She can still understand."

"Aye, as I meant her to."

"Is Gale back yet?"

"He's taken a detour by way of Pyke," Katniss tells Prim. "Lady Asha insisted. But I have things for Hazel and the children from him and he'll be back as soon as she lets him go." She starts to tell Prim some of the things she's seen, not in any proper order but as they occur to her. Prim takes out a cow's horn comb and begins to brush Lady's sleek white fur, listening patiently.

"At Lannisport I met a boy who looked so much like you," Katniss tells her. "Well not like you, not tiny, he was bigger than Gale, but the same coloring. Peeta Mellark he said his name was and he's a baker's boy but-"

At the table, their mother gives a twitch. Prim, who has always been much more attuned to her moods and her silent signals - or perhaps she's cared in a way Katniss never has - repeats it slowly for her. "Peeta Mellark," she says.

Their mother's voice is raspy from long lack of use, but she's found her tongue at last. "Mellark?" she repeats. "I knew a Mellark. He sold bread." The years fall back as though they had never been, she is a girl in a sunlit glade once again, her father's neat stone house only footsteps away and the sea as blue as the heart of a sapphire. "We were to be married."

"Mother!" Prim runs to her and hugs her hard, crying already. Katniss sits rooted where she is, mouth ajar.

"I was the apothecary's daughter, he was the baker's son. They said we were perfect for each other." The words slip loose like daisy petals in the breeze. They cost their mother nothing. In her dream world, everything is easy - not at all like Katniss' world.

"And now he's a grain merchant and his son's to be a knight," Katniss says pitilessly, hurling each word out viciously at her mother. _She deserves it. She deserves so much more hate than I can ever give._ "And you were a whore and your lord gave you to half-a-hundred men to fuck because you refused to speak. You could have been a salt wife, mother, we could have grown up with a roof over our heads and food on the table as a lord's bastards... but instead you had to open your mouth and legs for a thrall who died and left us. Left us like this!"

"Katniss, he was our father. We _loved_ him," Prim cries. "Would have had any other father?"

"Yes," she says coldly and at that moment she hates even her sister for her blind, trusting stupidity. _A week reed, just like mother. I'll have the care of her all my life just as I had mother's._ The two are nothing but lodestones round her neck, weighing her down. This is not rage that she feels, rage cannot feel so cold... so malevolent. She snatches her bow. "I'm going out to find food for us. Someone has to. Don't wait up for me."


End file.
